The garishly red, white, and blue Fox cable “news” channel may not be fair and balanced, but it sure is popular, TVNewser reports:
Fox News Channel had 13 of the top 15 shows on cable news in May, and 9 of the top 10 in the 25-54 demo, the program ranker shows.
Larry King and Lou Dobbs are CNN’s only shows in the top 15.
Here’s the complete May 2007 cable “news” program ranker.
Meanwhile, over on the broadcast network side, things look particularly grim for NBC:
Numbingly low Nielsen ratings for last week made it clear why NBC this week hired a new team to oversee its prime-time entertainment department.
The once-proud Peacock network averaged only 5.6 million viewers last week, less than half of prime-time leader Fox. Since 1991, NBC has had only two weeks with fewer viewers, and they were both during network TV’s summer slumber.
Ouch. However, if you look at the top ten shows of last week, you can see a winning formula (perhaps NBC just hasn’t hit on it; perhaps something else is to blame—who knows?): five out of ten are competitions. [ e.a.]
For the week of May 21-27, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 30.74 million; “American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 25.33 million; “Dancing With the Stars Results (Tuesday), ABC, 22.96 million; “Dancing With the Stars” (Monday), ABC, 20.19 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 14.14 million; “Lost,” ABC, 13.86 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 13.79 million; “Heroes,” NBC, 13.48 million; Movie: “Jesse Stone Sea Change,” CBS, 13.01 million; “The Bachelor,” ABC, 12.67 million.
The inherent tension of competition is of course the very lifeblood of entertainment. Waiting in anticipation to find out who will win American Idol is an experience that was shared by 31 million people last week. In a “mass of niches” culture, that’s a lot of people who are choosing good old-fashioned spectacle.
Still, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in the early 21st century and pop culture purveyors are stretching to anticipate what the audience will crave next.
In the Netherlands, some producers are choosing to slake the audience’s apparently voracious appetite for sensationalistic fare with rancid, rotten meat.
he Big Donor Show, a reality show that will air as a single episode on Dutch broadcaster BNN this upcoming Friday, will follow a 37-year-old woman in need of a new kidney who picks one from three potential donors based on their history, profile and conversations with their families and friends, Reuters reported Tuesday. In addition, viewers will reportedly be able to text message the woman during the live show to help her determine the best donor. …
“It’s a crazy idea,” Joop Atsma, of Dutch’s ruling Christian Democrat Party, told BBC News on Tuesday. “It can’t be possible that, in the Netherlands, people vote about who’s getting a kidney.”
Remember when I said the world is upside down? That’s what I meant. But some folks think it’s A-okay that “up” is “down”:
However some see The Big Donor Show — which is produced by Endemol, the recently-sold global reality TV and game show giant behind reality shows like Big Brother, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Fear Factor — as a way to raise awareness about the shortage of viable kidney donors in the Netherlands.
Yes, that would be the PRopaganda (TM) pitch. I’m not buying.
